The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1887-08-27

Halifax Dispatch, July Is.

IdAiioA D'sPutSu, July Id.
Rev. Frank w. Colley, missionary
at Labrador, writes a letter giving a
graphic account of heartrending
destitution prevailing there. He
has travelled the whole coast, and
declares that words cannot describe
the sufferings of the poor. He tells
of families of helpless old people
and equally helpless children en-
during the rigors of the late winter
with the thermometer 33 degrees
below zero, living in huts, sleeping
on bare ground, only with old sails,
and subsisting on rock cod, the
poorest kind of Goldfish known, and
on hard-tack supplied by the gov
ernment. To catch the fish the
perishing people had to travel five
milesover bare rocks. Bread, tea,
molasses, flour, meat of any kind
or any of the necessities of life are
unknown to them. Slow starvation
had driven the father of one family
mad, and the poor wretch had been
trying to eat his own boots. The
puny cod for breakfast, dinner and
supper, weeks upon weeks and
months upon months, while keep
ing the poor wretchcs from actual
death, only served to be daily tor
ture to them, and was of itself
enough to drive the whole popula-
ton into raving maniacs.
Missionary Colley declares that
he was implored for help at every
second house visited in all the vast
region. The inhabitants were driv-
en- to such desperate straits that
wives and mothers even had to sell
all their wedding rings for bread.
At Grady's, Stable bay, Rocky bay,
Spotted island and Seal island
whole families were slowly starving
in January. How they existed
through the winter God only knows.
The scanty aid sent by the New
foundland government was distrib-
uted before half the winter was over.
Mr.. Colley declares that only fear
of a repetition of the terrible suf-
fering induces him now to make
the terrible facts public.
A large portion of the coast is
sealed up by ice all winter long
and navigation at Cartwright, the
missionary's home, closed i'll Oc-
tober last and remained so until
the middle of June.
1t is impossible for the few who
have money to get supplies in win
ter. The missionary himself ac-
companied two men 100 miles over
the rocky wilderness to get two
barrels of flour, but could not get
them. Twenty miles further on
they cot one barrel of the common
est kind as a great favor by paying
SO so. In times past the people of
Labrador lived on the fat Of the
land; game in variety and seals
were abundant, but now these have
also failed. The missionary con-
cludes a three-column narrative by
demanding in the name of human
ity that the Newfoundland gov
ernment Immediately send re-
lief to that district and also provide
means for transporting the wretched
people to some other country.
The official organ of the govern
ment of Newfoundland comments
on the missionary's revelations as
an honest and truthful account by
one who has shared the terrible
privations of the people in the ex-
ercise of his sacred calling. This
paper, which few months ago re,
lentlessly denied that any unusual
distress existed at Labrador, is now
filled "with astonishment" to find
that human beings should be able
to prolong existence amid such